Introduction

I did this when I wanted to do a quick export of an entire DataSet (multiple tables) to Excel. I didn't add any additional customization to the fields, but I did want to make sure that dates, boolean, numbers, and text were all formatted correctly.

This code does that.

At some point, I'd like to make a GridView type component that would allow me to detail more about each item. For example, my latest project required me to make a column formatted with a given barcode font ("Free 3 of 9") that required that I put an * before and after the item number. The solution below doesn't make this easy to do, though... So yeah, not perfect. If anyone else has done something like this, let me know :)

NOTE: This method does NOT require Excel to be installed on the Server.

Background

I prefer to see each table in the DataSet to be named.

ds.Tables[0].TableName = "Colors";
ds.Tables[1].TableName = "Shapes";

I changed it to allow you to pass in a List<Table> in case you don't put them in a DataSet. No big deal either way.

Why did I use an XmlTextWriter when I seem to be only using the WriteRaw? I wanted to be able to have it fix any special characters with the "x.WriteString(row[i].ToString());". Note, this still may have problems with certain characters, since I haven't tested it much.

Comments and Discussions

If your going to use XmlWriters, don't use WriteRaw otherwise you may as well just use a StreamWriter or similar, always use the correct in built methods. Other than that, this is not a bad example of using the office Xml formats.